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good morning to those on the west coast and good local time to wherever else you’re joining us from my name is Jesse

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McKee and I’m the head of strategy at 221a I lead the fellowships and digital strategy at the organization

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today we’re here to talk with Sasha Cola and Valentina viviani about their Fellowship work over the past few years

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of the opening of an exhibition this course Earthly at the arga kunst in Bolzano Italy before we enter into our

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conversation today I’d like to address the gross land inequity upon which 22na finds itself in the city of Vancouver we

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which is built upon the unseated unsurrendered and traditional territories of the musqueam Squamish and

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sway the tooth Nations these are those cohomish and homecoming speaking peoples who have stewarded and continue to

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Steward these lands and Waters since time immemorial at 221a we Endeavor to shift to organizational practices to

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work together with indigenous people to end ongoing violence dispossession and displacement

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on this subject Sasha’s project the scorched Earthly considers the use of discouraged Earth policy and the many

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forms as military maneuver has taken up until the present in terrains largely described as either unseated or

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ungovernable the highlands of Northeastern India in Myanmar known as omia and the lands of indigenous people

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especially the unseated territories in what’s called British Columbia Bear all oral folklore that describe routine

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scorched Earth interventions Sasha’s research accentuates poetic voices and

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artistic actions from these terrains connected by their bearing of scorched Earth maneuvers

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I’d like to share a bit about our speakers today zashakola co-founded the research collaborative black rice in

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tunisang in nagaland in 2007 and she’s worked as a curator of modern Indian art

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at the csmvs Museum in Mumbai in 2009 to 11. she co-founded the curatorial

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collaborative and Union of artists and Art Space Clark house initiative in Bombay under which she curated projects

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collaboratively with Suma Sharma from 2010 to 2015. she’s currently a professor at the Nuovo Academia di Bella

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arti in Milan and co-artistic director of the arga kunst in bozano her writing

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and curatorial research turned around Contemporary Art in Indo Burma since the late 1980s

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Zasha has curated body luggage at the kunst house grads in 2016. I love you

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sugar cane I see iao Mauritius in 2016. she co-curated with Luca sarisa solo

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show of prabhakara at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in 2016 and she was the curator of the third

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poon biennial habit cohabit artistic simulations of some everyday spaces in

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2017. she was part of the curatorial team under Marco scotini of the second

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yinchuan biennial starting from the desert a colleges on the edge in 2018 and she’s co-curator with Marianne James

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Nick of a year-long public art commission for the national public library of Oslo

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also joining us is Valentina viviani who’s originally from Cordoba Argentina

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and she’s an artist and researcher working on ways of embodying plant thinking and entering into deep

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coexistence with different spaces understood as ecosystems she’s currently part of the artist

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Collective Paulie marchantia she holds a degree in sculpture from The Faculty of Arts at the National University of

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Cordoba in Argentina and an M.A in visual art and curatorial studies from the normal Academy ideas

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she’s participated in group shows and solo exhibitions between Argentina and Italy she was an artist in Residence in

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La Sala cue habito in the historic town hall of Cordoba with the work of Lo material no sucheta Nara the material

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doesn’t hold anything from 2017 to 2018. she participated with Paulie rajantia in

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sich in The in-situ Residency program Emily Tello in valdi Cantina in Italy

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with the work of alivochi claudikorpi quality story which voices which bodies

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which stories in Shazia Del orogatorio

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recently participated in group exhibitions including this course directly a sit-in with the missing

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Forest a collective performance walk at the ago instant Bolzano as a researcher

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Valentina has collaborated in different curatorial editorial projects she co-curated extraneous exhibition in

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Exile gallery for the curated by Festival in Vienna in 2022 currently she

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teaches uh in the master of matter matuta in Cantina as an M.A in

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curatorial practice and contemporary philosophy of the Mediterranean the first imaginings of This research

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project and project sorry of This research project took place during the Deep quarantine times of the pandemic

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but most of us were working raising kids and combined at home the project was interrupted by the military coup in

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Burma Myanmar and needed time to reorient to this new reality in 221a we’ve continued to be supportive

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throughout the speed bumps and blocks in the path we’ve been so glad to see the project take shape as its current

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exhibition in bozano which will travel later this year to Milan and finally the exhibition’s audio archive and several

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Works in it will find a permanent home in 221a is a collection in our library which will open later this year at 825

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Pacific a big thank you um and heartfelt warm gratitude disastrian Valentina for storing this

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bold work through many challenges and congratulations on opening this course early last month I’ll hand the zoom

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Windows over to you briefly um just one more thing um just about our fellows at 221a

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um since 2017 22na has worked with 14 fellows to conduct research over extended periods of time each fellow

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receives a living wage stipend and production support to lead projects for a pretend for potential social cultural

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and ecological infrastructure staff work alongside fellows to Resource and translate this Research into public

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programs education and engaging plans into new infrastructure stay tuned to

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our channels for an open call for new fellows later this year fellows in this re-articulated version of our program

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will receive a living wage stipend a production budget and a free Studio space for 18 months in our new facility

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in downtown Vancouver at 825 Pacific opening later this year finally I’d like to thank thank the

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province of British Columbia the ministry of Tourism art culture and spa

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for their support of this Fellowship through the international presence program if you’d like to support 221a

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that develops long-term paid opportunities for artists like Zasha and Valentina please give our to our ongoing

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fundraiser through our website 221a.ca donate um Valentine’s presentation will run for

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about 45 minutes and then we’ll have time afterwards for a q a so when we get to the Q a you’re able to ask your

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questions through a text box or you can raise your hand and we can bring you in with a live voice

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great so I’ll hand it over to you Sasha and Valentine great thank you

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thank you so much Jesse um please everyone let me know if I’m

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audible if everything’s fine if you can see the images well I want to say a huge thank you of course

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to the whole team at 221a Jesse and tell and Nicole who have really been the best research

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Partners on on this topic maybe we can

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already and of course my collaborator and we’re going to talk through all of this with Valentina over these images

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um which we’ll we’ll share with you in a moment um

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maybe we can jump in yes

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um please do feel free to raise your hand as Jesse mentioned it would be

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great to um if this turns into a conversation that’s absolutely

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welcome [Music]

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fine thanks the title came up also because we were

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thinking through this idea of two to one a and infrastructure and looking at

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different idea of infrastructure um spiritual infrastructures also

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infrastructures of solidarity

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um and and also infrastructures of protest

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uh it started with um looking at the scorched Earth policy

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and the scorched Earth is a military tactic that really combines both ecocide

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and genocide in a very particular way and a lot of my research does or has

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been at this intersection Jesse mentioned the work in twinsang town and

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everything around it which is in the middle of a forest between India and

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Myanmar in India but at the Edge by Edge uh touching Bangladesh Myanmar

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China Nepal this part of the world

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um and it’s because it’s such a border area it’s had the most

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incredible laws in place for decades um something called the Armed Forces

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special bars Act which I’ve spent a lot of my curatorial time

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trying to trying to trying to fight through

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different artistic practices on the ground um and

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trying to see its end as soon as as possible and

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um one of the things that the Armed Forces special bars act which is a legal

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law uh given to what is uh called a disturbed area is the right to enact

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scorched Earth on Forest land and this means uh to

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destroy whole swedes of forest land to burn it in order to

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um in order to seek militants so-called militants so-called terrorists it might

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be just two people that they’re after but to smoke out and seek um people there legally allowed to burn

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an entire Forest or allowed to burn a village or allowed

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to commit murder all on suspicion alone and also allowed to

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[Music] um create punishments like um like the burning of uh agrarian land

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grain granaries Etc and so this is where the research

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comes began let’s say in this part of India and China and it was

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interesting and Valentina you can join me in this video to look at

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scorched Earth not limited to that very obvious military tactic which has been

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of course uh used all over the world and is still used

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especially during at War but a way to also look at more subtle

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forms of scorched Earth and we started to think about our

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different protest sites and how certain kinds of sculptural policy are being enacted they’re two simple things like

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removing internet connections to break up protests or the knowledge of protests sometimes

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for months together as in Kashmir um to impose quarantine

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to impose to to to destroy public bathrooms

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discussing quite a bit as again of a subtle form but there have been other

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historic so-called subtle forms as well and we were

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we learned through 221a and the artist they introduced us to

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um and we look at some of this that other forms are scorched Earth

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um is also the removal of um Food Supplies the removal of

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um uh common lands and livelihood as a way to commit genocide ecocide but

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also to um to take away uh agency and

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people who are very very whose spirit is probably like extremely

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difficult to break and so we were looking at these different scorched or

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tactics military tactics and against that

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um so we started with let’s say the Northeast looking at more historical

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instances in British Columbia and then looking at protest sites in many parts of the world including Latin America

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India where it’s been Rife with different protests they poorly covered

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actually by International media or certain International media and uh it

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would be it was interesting to to look at them through the point of view of

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scorched Earth policies but also the resistance of them and so we came up

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with the title scorched Earthly as um looking at the Earthly community of

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ashilim members that book that initially was just a few conference papers and

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really taken by by his characterizing of or how he defined

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Earthly and so scorched Earthly is both a way of looking at scorched Earth but

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also looking at the resistance against scorched within terrains the best

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scorched Earth but then looking at more uh spiritually and Earthly resistances

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yeah you know exactly rather than contrasting that idea with

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the the planetary but kind of earthbounded and how these strategies

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are bounded to the Earth and also in a spiritual manner uh so this is something that came up

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very much in conversation through conversation rather a full day conversation with just silento but

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especially with Valentina um it was very important to to to

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understand that this idea of spirituality that we were talking about

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was not something ephemeral ethereal you

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know in the sky floating above but very Earthbound soil bound land-bound and

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very very practical and so that’s been uh the kind of uh

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spirituality we’ve been talking about where your connection with the land is

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is um the the way in which human beings are

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part of the ecosystem is something that um we we call the spiritually EarthBound

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Maybe we can play you a song from this is from very old research I’m

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looking at 2007 and this Fellowship [Music]

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okay okay

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[Music]

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foreign [Music]

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whatever [Music]

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please [Music]

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is it okay I’m I mean we just we this is one of the the

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first things we we started to to think of the story that

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carries on the idea of The Scorch Earth in these these two women singing the

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story about how rich this village nanga Village was and then how

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uh the the government came and and burned the granaries filled with rice

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and uh and how it burned for days and days and then people from the village

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know that if there is this saying that if you go into the kitchen and see the smoke

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people say oh your smoke is like the smoke of nanga Village so it has become

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a sort of a an imagery of uh of the area of these

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Scorch Earth tactics been practiced and also as Sasha was saying the idea of not

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only burning land but burning the food and supplies for the for the living of

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the communities as a sort of tactic

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yeah but um this is nanga town

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and uh yeah it’s

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um it’s great that they had the kind of history of the town in this uh song

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but also that and so this is really a oral literature but

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but also very much uh story describing scorched Earth and

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so um it’s beautiful the way they harmonize the way they sing uh in this kind of

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Morning Sun but at the same time um it’s remained as a as a some like a

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summation Of crystallization of scorched Earth um yeah

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and so it was interesting to go from this area in zomia in the northeast of

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India and touching Myanmar at the border really to uh

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this um these are I think uh images that are

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quite um well I mean they’re quite com in common they’re right they’re common copyright

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but it’s also been a research of Seoul one of the artists we met through

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to 1A and um and do we have a recording of yes

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let me just it’s full volume

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you know that big pile of Buffalo that photo of all those million buffalos yeah the classic one

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did you know that they actually ground all those up and they turn it into gunpowder holy

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used it in World War one that’s crazy

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yeah so I mean alongside

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um the genocide of of the people the extermination we were looking at these

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images as uh scorched Earth tactics if you like

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which are some Mass killing of these Buffalo which of course

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a way to break the whole um chain of Life the whole ecosystem of the

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people they encounter the people whose territory the settlers

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wanted to disrupt and and not just in terms of food source but in

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terms of the whole way of life we understood was so connected to the Buffalo spiritually also connected to

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the buffalo um and this was

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this was it’s a remarkable image and even though

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it’s not talking about a burning it’s talking about uh artificial Lee created

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hunger artificially created scarcity

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um we were interested in what we gain if we think about this through the idea of

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scorched Earth and a military tactic what do we gain in terms of

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understanding it that way and what kind of tactics then

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what kind of resistance um it met and to honor both histories

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the history of suffering but also the history of resistance

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um so yeah the kind of Mosaic this goes back to the Northeast not exactly nanga

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Village but not very far we’re back in ukrul which is um

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then hill hill areas of Manipur but these are Naga Hills even if it’s in

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present-day Manipur a small state within India and uh and this is sorceress guidingly

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where she liked to call herself and was very very interested in the number of names

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this lady this person has had so she was called a sorceress by the

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British colonizers but she also gave herself this title of the Priestess kind of spiritual

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political leader and was quite happy to have this magical uh

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uh title and in a way it was uh self

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uh self-fabulation if you like about [Music]

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um and and this has led to maybe uh aligned exhibition that I hope to do soon with

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other artists and thinkers and uh which is this idea of how women have

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through uh time and through history and through many terrains and geographies

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when they have been met with a lack of agency

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um Nicole upon a kind of spiritual agency so embracing the figure of the

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witch which is often you know when used by others to them it’s negative but when

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they use it themselves to describe themselves it’s almost as if that embracing of the

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witch figure gives them a power a spiritual power when

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seems to me all other Outlets were close to them for reasons

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of patriarchy for reasons of

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political uh political opposition uh

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but even just to change very rooted traditions so to become social reformers

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agricultural reformers to restore a forest things that require a huge amounts of

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breaking one’s habits one’s economic habits sometimes

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and to do this how they people like ideally that we’ve been researching had

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to take on this kind of spiritual nomenclature so guiding you for example

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raised an army she was very young about it 16 maybe younger and she didn’t tell

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me to fight the British Military and she told her young Army that

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um that they would she would she was that she had magic powers and she would turn their bullets to water

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in fact they won that battle and it’s recorded and it’s not known

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exactly how but she used this kind of spiritual magical

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um agency to to get what she wanted and

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what we were very interested in was the notebooks that were confiscated so when

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the British army finally confiscated her finally capture her and confiscate all

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her things um she told her people the haircut this

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religion that she formed with her cousin she told them that

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the reading of the the script is freedom is the road to

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hinuangram or freedom and uh so

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so it was incredible to see these notebooks that are in the pit Rivers Museum

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and in storage and they are meant to be

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from bhuban cave these these things that she saw again in a kind of vision and

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she put them down she did not know how she

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what again what was interesting about the nagas is that many of their stories talk

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about a lack of script or how they have relied on the oral tradition and amidst

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many materialities but how unlike the plains people the Hill People did not

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have a script because a dog ate it or it got lost in the great floods there are

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many stories about why there’s been but also over story and story and story and

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Monument all describing the same loss as as a loss not as something taken away as

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something that was um you’ve you sense this yearning for a

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script is yearning for uh and uh this was what made me think

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that if you’re constantly um being cheated of your lands and property

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by having let’s say the colonial legalities

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all written in in written language that then say this is true This Is Our Land

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this is true with their oralities they must have felt

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a huge kind of binding for this authority of

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the script and so I believe that this is a counter Authority in inventing the

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script there’s a new Authority a spirit of a spiritual order

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of a language that the colonial uh military cannot read cannot understand

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but this is the script she shared with her with her

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um the hurricane the religious following and also because of these

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sort of uh impossibility of translation there is a lot of meanings that emerge

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from this and these untranslatability also gives or keeps this uh this magic power or

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this spirituality alive I guess because uh it’s not so much on getting the exact

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translation but I was Sasha was saying how this script becomes material to

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confront colonialism or to guide an army towards Freedom or hides the the path to

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Freedom or as a shared code between a community that cannot be deciphered and

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it’s also kind of even musical in a way it looks like a musical script

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you know through the fellowship we were lucky to be able to again invite people

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to think alongside think with us people who are also working on this

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um so um we were very lucky to have a recordings a long conversation with

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akutong long who started to talk about the

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um who started to talk about the songs was it certain untranslatable

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songs that he had captured or recorded and

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we found this fascinating and it was just um led to a lot of of yeah discussion on

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on what you’re saying about translation um and transmission

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um decent translatable songs then keep being transmitted and also using

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contemporary with a contemporary instruments and drums that doesn’t

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necessarily follow the tradition and he would say that um

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the idea of transmission and transformation is how you preserve

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these songs and these uh these scripts so that was a very interesting concept

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to to think with how to preserve something but by transmitting it and

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passing it on and transforming it so yeah it was very interesting too

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I think this is another image of the notebook from the museum [Music]

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yeah what’s important with guiding you is okay later she’s recognized as Rani

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guiding you by like the queen Garden Dubai other Freedom Fighters like nehru

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in India by in India but um what’s interesting is that she was also

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involved in agrarian reform in trying to so it wasn’t just about the British but

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also about her own territory and and creating a kind of

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different ecology and in order to that do that as well she needed this um or

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used in a very powerful way this spiritual agency

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she was very young shall we

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do we have a um a way to listen to uh yeah sorry I’m

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just trying to this is the the video so it’s a film from yes

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that Soul made about this McDouble church and

34:08

um

34:18

it was built in 1875 when the methodists came here

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their purpose was to christianize the community and they built that church in 1875 and a

34:34

lot of people did convert to Christianity eventually they built this one here that’s located in our community

34:40

along with the residential school that was built here where the high school is a lot of abuses

34:48

happened in all residential schools across the country and this was no different

34:53

and so that church represented uh a memory

35:00

that we wanted to we didn’t want to remember

35:06

certainly there because many people converted to Christianity I

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think this Society had a relationship with some people but very few

35:19

and when it burnt down we all expressed happiness that the bad members it

35:25

represented was burnt and then we heard about this Society

35:33

working to rebuild it and even the chief and Council well they

35:39

opposed right from the beginning through letters but uh

35:45

no one listened and this the Alberta Government gave this Society permission

35:50

to rebuild and um I’ve spoken

35:57

against it in public through the media and all that and the chief encounters

36:03

sent their letters and they still built it and I guess to this to the province and

36:10

to this Society they think nothing of the horrific

36:15

memories people have of this church because I guess to them we’re in our our

36:21

history our memories mean nothing to them and

36:28

with the finding of the first 215 bodies of deceased children at in

36:36

Kamloops that proved people’s stories of having seen kids

36:43

killed her kids died from something and the children were never returned to

36:49

the parents for a proper burial so all these memories

36:56

are because of what the churches did to our communities across the country

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I guess I I I got angry when I saw the

37:08

church being rebuilt and uh I’ve heard people in the communities here

37:14

burn it down again but

37:20

and I was hoping maybe lightning will strike it hopefully but

37:25

it didn’t yet that’s how much we don’t want that church

37:31

Rising again to remind us of what happened to us in residential schools yeah

37:54

well this this goes in in two or three ways this will connect to right at the end of our

38:01

presentation to Bali and Jules and her performance and her story but it also

38:08

connects back to um the Methodist Church is built all

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over the northeast of India and this land we’ve been uh

38:21

putting it in a kind of Mosaic or Patchwork and so when uh people in parts

38:28

of India and Myanmar were conver when they converted

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what was interesting about that conversion is that they had to burn

38:40

everything and of course it would be interesting to look at at

38:46

the you know the terms of conversion so yes you might receive medicine or

38:51

medical care or education or something like this but the price was that you had to burn all

39:00

your clothing and you’ll see why in like latest slides um other

39:07

um because the it seemed like a whole world view had to be dismantled so to

39:14

burn all cooking vessels all textiles all headdress with Precious Precious

39:21

feathers rare things all kinds of

39:27

anything that had because every single object it seems

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every basket was inscribed with language with it was a kind of text these were

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books these were books of of identity of who people were and so that kind of

39:47

um dismantling was very necessary to dismantle the

39:52

spiritual I think cohesiveness of the people and their uh

40:00

resistance to Colonial colonialism

40:07

you know

40:12

so that’s the kind of um is again something

40:19

that comes from the north east of of India from from Manipur against the same

40:25

Naga Hills but all these designs that look very

40:31

geometric um there’s a complete Amnesia among the Weavers of what they actually mean what

40:39

they stood for what it what significance some things I remembered like the comb

40:44

formation is for women this is for a married woman this is for you know those kind of insignias still remember many

40:51

things are forgotten and so there’s also um being

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it’s been a way there’s an act of remembering

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re-pacing together um these Geographic these geometric

41:09

insignia into new stories that are also going to speak of

41:19

uh contemporary military aggressions so this one that’s an enormous show it

41:27

tells the story of a woman called lewing gamla and how she was

41:35

a sexually abused by two military soldiers and how she struggled and how

41:40

they then shot her in the head in the middle of the day in the middle of the afternoon with all the villagers

41:47

around just most had gone to practice for Independence Day celebrations

41:55

to be to be um yeah that’s why they were all not around

42:01

her she had stayed back to weave and she was at her weaving Loom hand Loom when

42:08

when this happened but there was students communities and and women’s communities who picked up this case even

42:16

though it was under a territory of the Armed Forces special pass act which means that these cases can never be

42:22

tried in a normal Court they can only go to a military court and of course if you’re accusing the military who cannot

42:28

who have special powers who cannot be accused even of rape it’s very it’s very

42:35

unlikely that a case like this would ever come to court

42:41

so any and so yet they managed they collected evidence that went to court

42:47

and uh she when they won the case which meant nothing really the the two Military

42:54

Officers were just transferred to another

43:00

space but for the community it has meant a huge deal this happened in 1986 and the case was

43:08

won in 1990 The Villages villagers went through an immense struggle but what was

43:14

really incredible was was the symbolic

43:20

aspect of winning a court case and so this geometric pattern tells that

43:26

story of the girl’s Spirit these dotted lines the many times each time that they

43:33

went to court the eyewitnesses you see the the kind of relay of witness here

43:39

definitely yeah Spirit the times I went to court

43:46

and then as something like one of the her neighbors

43:54

also Weaver daughter of a Storyteller and uh

43:59

she did this design of the of the kitchen and then many women

44:06

started to ask for the for the question and I’m

44:11

confident that design and then they uh wrote many poems and songs about her

44:19

story and we will hear one today and then each year

44:25

they meet and sing I remember her and we can hear

44:32

a bit of the of the song here [Music]

44:43

[Music] we come along

44:55

[Music]

45:01

[Music] foreign

45:13

[Music]

45:19

foreign [Music]

45:33

[Music] goes on but they sing about the story of

45:39

going to court and how she says to them that they must follow her and that she’s

45:45

waiting for them and we have some images of all the women

45:50

getting together the 24th of January where she was shot when she died and

45:57

then they all wear these questions together sing these songs

46:05

and it actually we believe it’s also a sort of a living

46:10

Monument of for a person and then these

46:16

um something like this artists also started to to tell through this question

46:22

and this kind of coding the story of many other women that have suffered Violence by the Army in these Villages

46:30

so it becomes sort of made relates with also guiding your

46:35

script as sort of telling stories that are not to be forgotten and also how

46:40

these stories are being carried on in women’s bodies till today

46:53

and then as Sasha was saying then we were looking at forms of road test as

46:59

resistance and this is one of the many protests

47:04

that happened from 2019 to 2020.

47:12

and this is a picture you you take in Sasha if I’m not wrong

47:19

a hundred days protest it was also a taking over of a highway it’s actually a

47:25

national highway but then everywhere that the protests continued in other cities and it was all

47:32

over India though they called it Shaheen bug so they kept the same name

47:38

and yeah somehow to to protest the citizenship

47:44

Amendment Act alongside the national register of citizens which together

47:50

have very damning consequences for people

47:56

especially Muslims without papers

48:01

which is quite common in a country like India but it signals out one minority

48:08

Community which is not really a minority with a signal just in It’s relatively a

48:16

minority yeah and um

48:21

and when was very striking at was how these uh this protest was able to I mean

48:30

take on this highway for 100 days and how it became a sort of community that

48:36

they were just sitting in and they would organize the food there would be a

48:41

library for kids and schools so like a community that could um

48:47

continue and carry living occupying that that street and how it became a sort of

48:54

ecosystem on its own of resistant and peaceful protest and this is what we also think when we

49:01

say Earthly right one of the of the ways of enacting these

49:08

that was an incredible energy there this is the work by Salvia Lopez

49:14

um member of Clark house initiative and

49:19

um she had made this kind of uh receipts

49:26

where she went to different people at different protests so the farmers protest or the Schein bag and asked

49:34

women to fill in their emotional labor so uh so she actually collected these

49:42

and the different people filled out and

49:48

[Music] just just the kind of Labor that

49:53

accompanies protest and thought it was a very powerful work and although the heroic

50:01

side of the protest is also always mentioned of course we were interested

50:06

in her take her artistic way of entering of talking about the protest

50:12

the people who bring food to the people who stay at home looking after children

50:18

or old people while someone else goes to protest and this

50:23

the many ways in which there is emotional labor behind protests

50:30

and sustaining a protest for 100 days or longer

50:36

as Jesse mentioned a lot of This research got

50:42

we got startled I guess by we were actually interviewing

50:48

um or just talking with someone

50:53

um exactly that that day on the 1st of February 2021 when the

51:00

when there was a third Mile chiku in Myanmar and Yangon and here again I was

51:06

very interested in the kind of barricades that an artist treats that

51:11

the um that the artist’s Community enacted so what you see is the dam in very similar

51:18

to the cushion not woven but worn as a skirt and how it was used as a kind of

51:25

spiritual barricade playing on the very patriarchal superstitions very

51:32

prominent and prevalent unfortunately in in Myanmar but also kind of spoofing it

51:37

where a man would lose his Pony or his power if they kick him in contact with a

51:44

women’s underclothing so they were splattering they were using underclothing as a barricade or these

51:51

women’s skirts underscots was a barricade against [Music] um

51:57

what you see in this picture against uh military

52:02

guns ammunition may take over of streets

52:14

so this is the artist Street in which artists performance artists

52:20

were enacting queer weddings all kinds of

52:26

um all kinds of um

52:31

funny hilarious performances on the street this is a reenactment and

52:42

but yeah we can go to the next slide and uh kind of taking over the street this

52:47

is um going back no it’s all right going back a bit

52:53

um looking at real scorched Earth policies against the rohingya the uh

52:59

Muslim Burmese Community or minority on in Myanmar in a small village called

53:05

indin and you see the forest land and you see this is 2017. this is researched by

53:12

salong seongwe and you see satellite images from Amnesty International

53:18

showing how the Farmland gets burnt um over over certain months

53:26

when the military was active in kind of dispersing an entire Village so

53:33

someone turned this into three enormous canvases and some form of this who has

53:42

entered the project um yeah you see another image as well it’s

53:50

really talking about scorched or talking about ecocide and genocide as how they

53:56

are together this is back to 2021 and the coup and

54:01

these are images that will not be in the recording latest we just run through them who’s

54:09

um reflect who who managed to escape she’s an exile with her child and her

54:17

husband and she’s living in Paris and so she came to the exhibition at Target

54:22

kunst and made an incredible performance

54:27

um with these stamps

54:32

and wrote many numbers and made a film as well

54:46

make sure you’re very short and this is another commitment

55:12

laughs

55:30

so Charlie is um is making up uh she’s been in exile for a long time

55:38

in Mexico and she made this film when her

55:44

colleague and dear friend Dean Lin was in jail and he had made something called

55:51

the fly in jail many years before when he had been there

55:57

previously under another military dictatorship and

56:05

and so Charlie continues his fly she makes a kind of burnt fly

56:11

and she said and Tin Lin was very much able to

56:17

transform his work into humor

56:24

while talking about the existential [Music]

56:31

situation of being in prison in Myanmar she’s talking about the situation of the

56:40

many people right now the Young and this scorched fly has horrible the

56:48

imagery is of course of the kind of Tire burnings the many burnings

56:55

she said I tried to be funny it didn’t come out so funny I think it’s actually uh very deeply funny and has this form

57:04

of resistance in the way in which he’s trying to be the flyer now in 10 lens uh

57:10

it was the fly was annoying him but here she’s become the fly she takes

57:18

and she really thinks about her friend and his performance in an extremely profound way and I think it was one of

57:24

the most important works I think that I’ve come

57:29

out of of this period so we were really

57:36

any moved by it not moved frightened by it as well but also

57:45

she’s able to without speaking speak for everybody

57:52

very clearly you get the message

58:04

yeah and then um I guess going back to these uh or

58:09

connecting to this idea of the spiritual uh figures as a sorts of resistance on

58:16

the idea of spiritually Earthbound we come across a

58:22

Desmond which is a great poet and Storyteller and he shares

58:29

his um his research about the the this black

58:35

Priestess and the sacred forest and then these same areas of Northeastern India

58:42

and how this um these so-called sacred forest and was

58:47

inaugurated by this Mormon uh that was the steward of this sacred Forest has

58:54

been decimated by Timber so

59:00

he tells the story of of the black Priestess in a very beautiful story and

59:05

how she connected this uh this liminal space he would say this threshold

59:12

towards the sacred Forest which was um an integral part of the life of the

59:18

community and how now it disappeared and then in the 60s and then he goes back

59:25

and and connects with people who are trying to reforest this sacred forests

59:30

and how they also have to relearn the rituals uh to plant the saplings and to

59:37

bring back these this very important part of the of the community so

59:45

uh we have these they may be the references maybe these images also how

59:52

people are reforesting through the land while also singing and also how this

1:00:01

these songs become an integral part of the activity and the rituality of bringing back the forest

1:00:07

and then this is the sound very quickly we can

1:00:14

hear [Music]

1:00:22

and as you see it’s a very constant and very as you go funny

1:00:27

storytelling through drums and and then we also wanted to look to

1:00:34

the chipko movement which may be very well you know known and have reverberated internationally and these

1:00:41

women that would hug trees as a specific protest in the Indian Himalayas in the

1:00:46

70s and here is where also my research

1:00:52

extensive thread who are Argentina into contemporary forms of Scorchers which is

1:00:58

also deforestation and I looked at the choreographies of these

1:01:04

bodies hugging trees and this connection with the sacrality

1:01:10

of the forest as part of their livelihood and sustain and also part of

1:01:16

the cosmogony and I looked at this protests that happen in a very different context in a

1:01:22

city in South America in a place where more than 90 percent of the forest

1:01:30

native Forest is gone and how this the body of these protesters

1:01:36

sort of embody the missing Forest um so our body tells the story of the

1:01:43

forest that is no more and um in this thread we also started to think

1:01:50

about a performance that became part of the exhibition

1:01:56

and and you use the idea this phrase that I just love of body memory

1:02:04

yeah this idea of of how the

1:02:10

I mean a body that remembers and the idea of muscle memory because I connect

1:02:15

these these bodily positions this choreographies of the body as the sort of memory that is not intellectual but

1:02:22

comes from the muscle memory let’s say of some a body remembering uh you know

1:02:28

the the life of a forest for example and how that also bounds us Earthly and

1:02:35

spiritually with the with the forest so kind of trying to establish through this muscle memory that connection

1:02:44

and yes so kind of bring taking these sorts of as we saw the cause of guiding

1:02:51

laws notebooks or the codes indications also to see these positions of the protesters the sort of languages or or

1:02:59

words to put or to say something and so we go to the

1:03:06

to the exhibition that also took the form of a sitting

1:03:12

within an another exhibition that was already taking place in arrogate and uh

1:03:19

I don’t know Sasha if you want to say something about how we decided to do the display

1:03:24

uh and you can see the link maybe already with the battle yes

1:03:30

four or so days are the shows moving by by something LA and

1:03:38

themselves are cushions but this idea of making it into a kind of tent remains of

1:03:44

Shaheen bag we had um some are to be seen from to the top

1:03:50

because they refer to a woman who hanged herself so the first one on the left is

1:03:56

to be walked under so that you already see this kind of embroidery that hangs

1:04:01

okay loose uh the other the last one is meant to be read more like a book or on

1:04:07

so it’s more flat so this was a sound work sound Mosaic with the shoulder and

1:04:14

um so we came upon this form of the sitting

1:04:20

and occupying of the museum and occupation of the exhibition through

1:04:29

yeah through sound and through this kind of form that had that had many references

1:04:37

through the entire project yes so I I is I was saying before this

1:04:46

was um I mean I think the sort of sitting started with this performative

1:04:52

work which um was done by the collective eye part of

1:04:59

and extend This Thread with the the chip movement the deforestation in Argentina

1:05:06

but also speaking with the students and people from the the area of Boston about this

1:05:11

also the the deforestation of all the change of the landscape in the in the

1:05:17

area we came together and we did this performative walking which we uh

1:05:23

embodied these different gestures of uh the protests along the city and we were walking

1:05:30

towards the the gallery

1:05:36

sort of also interrupting in the in the street and people would be joining us as

1:05:42

we walked and then we transverse the space of the of the exhibition again

1:05:48

this idea of the occupation of the of the space and as a sort of collective body

1:06:01

and then we have this moment of active listening of this sound

1:06:06

Arrangement that we work with an artist Carlo barbagallo so all of these

1:06:13

extracts that we have been listening about the different parts of the archive were built together

1:06:21

also kind of woven into a sound piece that was reproduced and we invited

1:06:27

people to inviting people to sit and listen to these stories in the space there are two of the

1:06:36

the different stories yeah

1:06:41

so it also became a very inhabited space

1:06:48

um then we have also the lack of having influencavera a roosting which he was

1:06:55

the director of the get Institute in Yangon for many years and had known the

1:07:01

artists participating in the the performances and in the uh they lean uh

1:07:07

that you just saw the Fly video so he did an an incredible uh

1:07:14

kind of introduction let’s say to the complexities and the stories of the military coups and the story of Myanmar

1:07:20

and the art scene there so it was also perfect

1:07:27

I would say introduction to the following performance by yada narwin and

1:07:33

colad which are both also from Myanmar now are living in Marseilles

1:07:40

um as refugees and this is their clean some

1:07:46

Conquest performance hmm yeah

1:07:52

okay any loss of identity Maybe

1:08:13

and then we and the performance formed by Berlin jewels

1:08:19

and they not only performed but brought

1:08:25

the fishkin leather pieces and the is in

1:08:30

process uh Wellborn knife they were carving and um

1:08:39

sort of to all the the importance of the transmission of these knowledge and how

1:08:44

they um they want to

1:08:50

grow into these crafts learn them and transmit them and to honor the their

1:08:57

ancestors and which was a very very profound and very special moment

1:09:05

and then sharing with everyone the fish skins with the different words

1:09:13

written in them

1:09:21

and then we have a bit of one of their poems

1:09:29

I would like to acknowledge my gratitude

1:09:37

for standing here alive strictly and from the resilience of my

1:09:45

ancestors my babies thank you yes Relentless

1:09:50

Warriors my babies thank you I would like to acknowledge

1:09:58

the ancestors that are witnessing this mess

1:10:07

with Myanmar you feel Assad Somali

1:10:16

if the settlers missed our ancestors so much they wouldn’t dig our bones back up

1:10:23

I would like to acknowledge that every time I forget to ask about accessibility

1:10:30

in a venue I am working at I am actively excluding our disabled

1:10:35

friends from this community I would like to acknowledge any harm I

1:10:42

have caused towards our trans beloveds and the fact that I may not have known

1:10:48

High cause harm is no excuse because what I do know is I still have a

1:10:53

lot of fun learning to do I would like to acknowledge that black

1:11:01

lives matter I would like to acknowledge that black lives matter

1:11:06

I would like to acknowledge that black lives matter

1:11:12

black prices and black Excellence is forever

1:11:19

I would like to acknowledge the damage I am causing by continuing to speak the

1:11:25

colonizers language as if it has the words to speak truth as if it has the

1:11:33

words to hold you [Music]

1:11:55

[Music] I mean

1:12:02

I would like to acknowledge the decal of Your Love gifted to me by all the single

1:12:08

mothers of coming that I’ve had the honor of witnessing I would like to acknowledge the poetic

1:12:16

psychary gifted to me by all the youth on the streets that I had the honor to meet

1:12:22

I would like to acknowledge me for all that I do and don’t do

1:12:30

for the days that I fall and don’t fall and for the waste that maneuvering how

1:12:36

to love and be loved

1:12:42

thank you [Applause]

1:12:53

okay so I think that is yes

1:12:58

um the the last part of our

1:13:06

the the day of the ex the exhibition and end with that

1:13:12

beautiful poems she said many

1:13:21

thank you um it was like three years of work in an hour so thank you yeah sorry I’m concise

1:13:29

but no it it all fits together like one beautiful picture um

1:13:34

thank you for that um I guess oh sorry I’ve got some noise

1:13:40

um can you still hear me really yeah um I just have a question around the

1:13:46

long duration of your research especially in nagaland um Sasha you’ve been working

1:13:52

with people from nagaland in the land for about 15 years um maybe you could just describe

1:13:59

what first interested you in this territory and how your relationship to it and the people who live there as has

1:14:06

evolved over the years [Music]

1:14:11

um it started with the

1:14:18

um losing a friend I guess in that area so much much before and I couldn’t

1:14:25

understand why I lost this friend I couldn’t understand the neglect of the

1:14:30

medical officers I couldn’t understand what was going on and so and I couldn’t

1:14:36

understand what it that there could be racism at that level

1:14:41

that kind of ubiquitous system like systemic racism it’s not something you witness in you

1:14:50

witness it in a different way in the cities it’s more subtle

1:14:56

I was not accustomed to seeing so many

1:15:01

guns so much militarization and when I talk to people about this

1:15:08

area because I always talked about it because it was a mystery you never see this area

1:15:13

on television I’m talking about local Indian television you’re just it’s just a forgotten space

1:15:20

and it comes up very rarely but only ever as tourism it’s beautiful there

1:15:26

it’s full of forest land only as craft anthropology

1:15:33

um only in these lenses and if you ever talk about contemporary culture from

1:15:38

this area people from the area itself will say no but it doesn’t exist even if

1:15:43

there are schools and universities there because you’re talking about a huge land all these artists it’s as if they all

1:15:50

just moved to other cities like Delhi and Bombay and Bangalore or Calcutta and

1:15:56

um and and this is not true and it’s also

1:16:01

always being said that this uh that that no contemporary culture

1:16:07

exists there uh and this is something I’ve tried to

1:16:14

challenge not just this is a way for me to then think of many other spaces and that’s why for me it’s not a geography

1:16:22

it’s a way into many geographies and understanding ideas of Center

1:16:29

Insider outside that’s very free but also I realized that I myself didn’t have the

1:16:36

ability to read um contemporary culture always and that was

1:16:42

a great way to learn that not everything is going to be installed

1:16:49

in a museum or on a pedestal or within a frame art happens contemporary culture

1:16:55

happens but in different ways in different forms and especially in a militarized border area those ways are

1:17:03

more coded more um between the lines and done with more humor and more it’s

1:17:11

more subtle it’s so um it’s it’s it’s been a way of connecting

1:17:19

with other researchers practitioners from the ground from the land with friendships that continue and

1:17:28

and it’s continues to connect with other lands and territories

1:17:34

there was I never thought of the space as indigenous or any of those kind of

1:17:40

words I didn’t think of it in terms of ecology I didn’t think of it in terms of First

1:17:46

Nation uh but it’s all of those things

1:17:52

as well thank you

1:17:58

um since I know you’ve just started working in bozano so it’s it’s a relatively new

1:18:04

city for you um but what’s the reception from the exhibition like or and the performances

1:18:10

and what kind of conversations did this work bring up in in the context in Bolzano

1:18:17

well baleen’s performance was a blessing um really it was a very strong and

1:18:26

[Music] um same with Colette and yadana would would

1:18:32

you say Valentina also valentina’s performance was a blessing bringing this

1:18:39

strong missing Forest that was created by so many people across the street from

1:18:46

the river to the museum was was really um

1:18:53

yeah nothing short of of a blessing and I think the reception was so interested

1:19:00

so warm I don’t know if you felt it Valentina but

1:19:06

um because they too are a border area

1:19:14

they it was a part of Austria and only after the first world war did it change

1:19:20

so it was a way to speak about Ukraine in a way to speak about

1:19:26

deforestation a way to speak about many

1:19:32

local histories the stories of the commons that also were you know taken

1:19:38

from them and then uh you know turn into data I mean yeah turn into

1:19:46

Italian uh citizens but then there is also this idea of displacement but I

1:19:52

think there was a really genuine uh [Music]

1:19:59

deepness in how people were listening uh to this yeah maybe not so

1:20:07

heard stories from far away but I think there’s always the possibility through

1:20:13

solidarity and through empathy to make certain connections and to

1:20:19

um I felt like I’m very deep listening from the from the community

1:20:24

which was uh very special and like an active you know listening

1:20:31

which was beautiful and then of course more participative in some ways but then

1:20:38

uh in the Berlin’s performance and the listening of the archive would actually

1:20:44

is asked from people to to be there listening you know not just

1:20:50

talking in an exhibition and if that really happened

1:20:59

on that note um for those uh who are with us and listening if you have any questions please raise your hand and we

1:21:06

can bring you with a live voice or you can type in the Q a box and um I can read out your question

1:21:12

um so the project is going to continue later this year in Milan have you had

1:21:17

any thoughts about how it might evolve or develop because it’s hard to imagine how this work could just be easily

1:21:24

replicated in another space it might take on another form or another life of its own in a new context

1:21:32

no and it’s what’s great is that we’ve been assembling uh almost these these uh

1:21:42

jigsaw pieces these sample pieces that do fit together but they can be fit in

1:21:47

different ways there’s something very modular to the research which is good and bad but in the sense

1:21:54

that each time you can tell a slightly different story or angle it differently so the second

1:22:00

uh instance is definitely more towards

1:22:06

um the spiritually Earthbound this idea of spiritual fabulation spiritual

1:22:12

infrastructure which is very much part of the research but that is the emphasis on on the

1:22:19

second iteration not so much pulling together of

1:22:25

of um of performers let’s say which was the

1:22:33

first of really um which was very much connected to prison reenactment culture that is made within

1:22:42

prison so you can’t see it how those things transmit trying you know and and

1:22:48

continue in ways so reenactment catastrophe withdrawal genocide equal

1:22:54

site were very much part of the first I think the second one will really be about concentrating on certain figures

1:23:01

individuals um who who took up struggle using these

1:23:08

spiritually Earthbound methods if you were part and many of us joined

1:23:14

valentina’s performance you could feel the energy of that Earthbound spiritual

1:23:21

breathing sense of so it was also there in the first it’s

1:23:26

just about accentuation so I also hope a deepening each time of the research that

1:23:33

it continues um new voices and yeah do you want to say

1:23:38

something no no I I agree with what you’re saying

1:23:44

and that was yeah the direction we were speaking and that we see this archive as a sort of

1:23:51

something that can enter in dialogue uh you know here it took the form of a sitting within an exhibition which was

1:23:57

very significant as Sasha was saying but then the other forms and dialogue so you

1:24:03

can take with other realities and that’s the strength of this I guess

1:24:13

yeah I mean the songs they speak of violent moments they speak of histories

1:24:21

but there’s thing healing in them there’s something vital that’s wood

1:24:26

passing down the ability to remember

1:24:32

a history but tell it in a way that heals the future as well

1:24:37

this idea of you know the songs really have this in

1:24:43

them also the the poems so

1:24:55

yeah we’re so looking forward to um receiving the archive of the project later this year

1:25:02

um for those in Vancouver um check us out at 825 Pacific sometime in

1:25:08

the fall or winter and we hope to have a display of this

1:25:14

work to share with an audience here and yeah we’ll have to think how to include the audio too that’s always interesting

1:25:21

in a library contact um but yeah we can talk more about that down the road thank you Zasha thank you

1:25:28

Valentina for your time this evening and for the projects feeling a lot of fomo but we’re very

1:25:34

happy that valine could join you over there um for now and good luck getting ready for move on it’s um we’ll speak soon

1:25:42

thank you thank you thank you for everyone that was missing

1:25:48

ciao bye-bye bye

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